A Metal-Exposure Guide to surviving your post festival depression!
As the festival seasons draws to an end – it´s time to face the dreaded aftermath of a summer full of drinking, head banging and shouting “SLAYER!!” more or less randomly.
You´ve been visiting as many festivals as your bank account allowed, traveling through Europe in your shitty car (only if you´re not German, Germans always have nice cars) with your best long-haired buddies, arguing over which CD is next (because seriously, no one wants to listen to grind core for 4 hours) and having to stop every hour because, DAMN, beer makes you pee so much.
At the festival, you´ve been getting soaked (Wacken) or sun-burned (Party San), wishing you were either in a warm and dry bed, or in a nice and air-conditioned ice cream parlour. Running around in your underwear seemed a perfectly good idea at the time, getting a beer shower was welcome refreshment and an evening considered incomplete without getting punched in the face in the mosh pit.
If you´re a woman, your ego probably got a boost of +1000 because of all the men drooling over you – but you also developed a slight aversion to them (men can be so desperate sometimes). You´ve become an expert at dodging puke-mines and the sight of bierleichen doesn´t even disturb you anymore – that´s what the first aid staff is for, after all. You´ve seen more penises than you could count, pretty much didn´t get sober for four consecutive days and probably wondered if you should worry about the color of your poop (the answer is no – only when it´s black – for the rest it can get pretty much any color of the rainbow).
Going home on Sunday seemed like a pretty good idea – leaving behind the wasteland filled with orphaned tents, abused chairs and piles of trash. There´s no fun to be found if there´s grumpy cats all around and people are packing up their stuff. Even the beer stand is closed! Oh, to be in the comfort of your own home, having a solitary and not ice-cold shower, eating something that doesn´t involve more than 20 E numbers and having more than 4 hours of sleep! What luxury!
But let´s face it – now that you´re at home again, you´d even give up the comfort of your own lavender scented porcelain throne in favor of standing in line for an hour for a smelly dixie toilet – just to experience that festival-feeling again. Why sleep in a comfy four-poster, when you can curl up on your half-empty air mattress whilst listening to a 10-hour Cantina Band version being playing 2 meters from your tent? Sleep is for the weak, after all! The feeling of being free, of being surrounded by like-minded (and just as crazy) spirits, burping as loudly as you possibly can, harvesting approving looks of your neighbours – that´s really what you do it for. Celebrating heavy metal music, cheering to your favourite bands and arguing which show was the best – why can´t you do this fulltime? Why can´t all of life be a big heavy metal festival?
And all this, you realize whilst sitting in the comfort of your own home, or worse, on Monday in the office. So if you´ve been hit by those post-festival blues, what can you do to keep functioning normally and not break down every time you look at the festival bands around your wrist? You could try turning off your fridge and sleeping on the floor – it will keep the festival feeling going for at least another week! Though I wouldn´t recommend keeping up the 24 hour beer drinking – society tends to frown on that.
- Plan your next festivals! 2017 seems a long way off, but some festivals already have a few headliners confirmed. Take a look at which festivals you would like to visit next year and make a nice countdown (oh wait, this could be even more depressing..). There are even some nice winter festivals, if you´re into camping at -10 degrees.
- Take a look at all the concerts that are in your area. The summer is for festivals, the rest of the year is for concert tours in nice and comfortable venues with actual decent sound an no rain/sun.
- Alright, this one is more or less similar to the above, but it also involves travel! Most of the tours stop in great cities in Europe and those places are asking to be discovered by you. So why not fly to a city like Oslo, Berlin, Stockholm or Amsterdam? Check your favorite band there, and head over to the metal bar and make some international friends! Or better even, visit the festival friends you made some weeks ago!
- Start camping. Wait, what? Camping without a festival? Hell yes! Autumn and spring are great seasons to pick up your best metal friend, crawl beside them in a tent, fire up the bbq, open a can of beer and blast Dissection all through the night. Ok, on the usual camping sites you might find a non metal crowd that frowns upon you shouting “HELGAAAA” in the middle of the night, but who cares? Also, if you have a back yard, you won’t even have to deal with that.
- It’s okay to wallow for a bit. Immerse yourself in the music of those bands that you saw perform, who were beyond amazing. Put on the one song that gave you goose bumps and get carried away by the memories.
- Get together with friends to look at festival pictures together. Though every now and then you might tear up because of the bittersweet festival memories, the amount of laughs you will have (“I don’t remember having a penis drawn on my face” and “Who’s that lying next to me in my tent?!”) will compensate for that. Also, you can initiate tip number one here – plan for next year together!
- Consider the festival-free period as a time to regenerate – all that drinking, smoking, partying and eating unhealthy stuff is a tax on your body. So think of it as a time to take good care of yourself – eat salads, drink gross smoothies, go to bed at 10, do some yoga. This way, when the festival season draws closer, you’ll have a fit and healthy body to party with! It’s a boring tip, but an important one!
- Stock up on merch, CD’s and vinyl. If you’re not much of a concert fan, you could use the money you are not spending on beer or the metal market during a festival to go shopping for some (rare) vinyl, special editions or new patches for your jacket! Trust us, you’ll feel quite happy with your most recent purchases (your wallet might not though).
- Organize a flunky ball tournament at the office/work. Get the cheapest beer you can find, some sort of projectile to serve as a ball, and invite your coworkers to join you the toughest festival sport of all! Of course there is the possibility that your boss won’t be very happy with this development, but hey..totally worth it!
- If all these fail: visit your mum and have her make her best comfort food. If that can’t cheer you up, nothing will. Last but not least, hold on tiger! Before you know it, the festival season is upon us again!
What other post festival depression tips do you have? Let us know so we can make this list as complete as possible!